I did some brainstorming about ethereum classic and thats my view on it. Dont take it as facts, it's just my guess. Comments are welcome to find out if some problems mentioned are already solved, or if I am wrong in some points...
I really wondered, what is "the real" ethereum chain, eth or etc?
At first I thought it must be etc because it is "immutable" and thats a strong argument. ETH forked to fix an exploit in a smart contract. But following the rule that "code is law" means eth is the fork and etc is the real chain.
But the question is who decide which is the real chain, how to find consensus? Miners decided to accept the changes and are 90% pro eth. Same happens to the price, etc is 90% lower than eth.
But I guess this isnt the only way to look at it, most important is what is happening now? There is no way to avoid bugs and exploit in code, so if there is one in a smart contract there has to be a way to fix it. But first there has to be consensus that the behaviour of the contract isnt as intended and it needs to be changed. Fixing the contract must happen within the contract not by forking the underlying technology. If there was this option for the dao contract during the attack, eth wouldnt have to fork. So solving this problem should end the immutability debate.
But there are some serious issues for the "immutable chain" ETC. First is the hashrate which is 528.1 GH/s. There are four mining pools with higher hashrate for eth which calculate the same algorithm, this means thats these pools are able to do a 51% attack on etc. I dont say that they will do it (they have no reason to do it) but this is a serious issue if you consider to hold long term etc because you have to put your trust in these pools not to do it.
Another and most important point is that ETC wants to stay POW and won't switch to POS. I am not sure if this is confirmed already but I have read about that.
My guess is when ETHswitchs to POS there will be another hardfork. It happens if miners keep mining with the previous version which would lead to a third chain and it would compete with etc. We have to expect that miners will mine anything and not turning off miners.
Another problem I see is that in general POW requires more energy than POS, thats why I think the gas cost in USD will be higher for the POW chains than for the POS chain and it's a mistake to think that etc will be cheaper than eth.
Finally after the transition to POS, the ethereum client might not be compatible with the etc chain and etc developers have to come up with their own ideas and software, that's where the projects will split and decouple.
I really wondered, what is "the real" ethereum chain, eth or etc?
At first I thought it must be etc because it is "immutable" and thats a strong argument. ETH forked to fix an exploit in a smart contract. But following the rule that "code is law" means eth is the fork and etc is the real chain.
But the question is who decide which is the real chain, how to find consensus? Miners decided to accept the changes and are 90% pro eth. Same happens to the price, etc is 90% lower than eth.
But I guess this isnt the only way to look at it, most important is what is happening now? There is no way to avoid bugs and exploit in code, so if there is one in a smart contract there has to be a way to fix it. But first there has to be consensus that the behaviour of the contract isnt as intended and it needs to be changed. Fixing the contract must happen within the contract not by forking the underlying technology. If there was this option for the dao contract during the attack, eth wouldnt have to fork. So solving this problem should end the immutability debate.
But there are some serious issues for the "immutable chain" ETC. First is the hashrate which is 528.1 GH/s. There are four mining pools with higher hashrate for eth which calculate the same algorithm, this means thats these pools are able to do a 51% attack on etc. I dont say that they will do it (they have no reason to do it) but this is a serious issue if you consider to hold long term etc because you have to put your trust in these pools not to do it.
Another and most important point is that ETC wants to stay POW and won't switch to POS. I am not sure if this is confirmed already but I have read about that.
My guess is when ETHswitchs to POS there will be another hardfork. It happens if miners keep mining with the previous version which would lead to a third chain and it would compete with etc. We have to expect that miners will mine anything and not turning off miners.
Another problem I see is that in general POW requires more energy than POS, thats why I think the gas cost in USD will be higher for the POW chains than for the POS chain and it's a mistake to think that etc will be cheaper than eth.
Finally after the transition to POS, the ethereum client might not be compatible with the etc chain and etc developers have to come up with their own ideas and software, that's where the projects will split and decouple.